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The clutching tendrils of summer

We should be getting cooler weather with autumn progressing here, but today was one of the last gasps of summer. Overnight we had the highest March minimum ever recorded in Sydney, 25.9°C. We slept with the air conditioning on all night, which is a rare thing. I don’t imagine we’d have got much sleep without it.

By the time I had my 5k run this morning it was almost 28°C, making it another slow and exhausting one. And by mid afternoon we approached 37°C. There’s supposed to be a cold front change coming through after midnight, but until then it’s supposed to still be almost 30°C at midnight. Thankfully tomorrow is supposed to be much cooler. But the Bureau of Meteorology says this isn’t the end of summery conditions, and we’re going to have more hot spells throughout autumn.

In the middle of the heat I went to the lighting showroom to pick up our new light fixtures, which we’d ordered last weekend. I got a message yesterday that they were in from the warehouse, so I drove down to get them.

Some of the new light fittings say that they are DIY installation, not requiring an electrician. I checked and they involved simply unscrewing the existing light battens, fitting the lightshade over it, and screwing the thing back in. No need to touch anything electrical at all. However when I tried to do this, the shade didn’t fit over the existing batten base. So I think new smaller battens need to be installed, which is indeed a job for an electrician. I’ll call one tomorrow to make an appointment for them to come around and install all the lights.

DIY electrical work is simply not an option in Australia. I know that in some countries you can do your own electrical wiring work if it’s not too complicated, and honestly I feel confident that I could most probably do this job of changing the light fixtures. But here it’s illegal to do so. Anything that touches electrical wiring must be done by a licensed electrician. Otherwise you’ll void your home insurance and be liable for fines up to $40,000. So absolutely not something I want to mess with.

Three more ethics classes this evening, and some Indian curry vegetables with rice for dinner.

And some more Japan photos! Takeshita Street in Harajuku:

Okonomiyaki, before self-cooking:

And after:

In the restaurant Sakura-Tei:

Followed by dessert from a crepe place on the street:

Saga of a door

Our new front door was supposed to be painted today. The workman arrived in the morning, but then vanished for a few hours. When he returned he said that he’d been driving around to different hardware stores looking for the specific moulding style and size that is on all of the other apartment front doors, so that he could install matching moulding on ours before painting. But he’d been unable to find it anywhere.

So he asked if I’d be around next week and said he’d go further afield and try to find the matching moulding, and then come back to affix and paint next week. So we have another week with an unpainted wooden door.

After lunch I took Scully for a long walk, around the harbour shore. I stopped at the Grumpy Baker in an attempt to get a snack, but after waiting a few minutes with nobody serving me (I was the only one waiting to be served), I gave up and left. This bakery used to be really good, but their service has always been slow, and I’ve soured on them a bit recently. Instead I went to the nearby cafe which opened recently and decided to see what they had. There were a few muffins and small cakes, and they had a caramel slice that looked good, so I got one of those. It turned out to be delicious, with chewy caramel, which is not usual in a caramel slice. Really good. So I’m glad I went there!

Down by the water we met a woman with a small caramel-coloured dog, and as she approached she picked up her dog and carried her past. I said hello and she explained her dog was very shy. I said Scully was a bit too, and she stopped and carefully put her dog down. It was named Indy. The two dogs both approached one another very carefully and slowly, and eventually had a close sniff and hello. Scully is very gentle with other dogs and the woman was happy that Indy seemed to be friendly with her. She said it would be good for Indy to have positive experiences with other dogs. So I stayed there for several minutes as the two of them got used to each other and relaxed. It did seem that Indy was more shy than Scully. The woman seemed very happy with this, so that was good.

This evening I made a new experimental pasta sauce, using half a left over sweet potato from last night’s couscous dish. I boiled it up and then pureed it with semi-dried tomatoes and paprika to make a pasta sauce, served over fusilli, with chopped almonds for some crunch. It was pretty good.

Games night and new lights

Friday morning I did the first regular grocery shop since we got home from Japan. It was a big order. When I picked it up from the supermarket, the friendly woman there who always says hello told me that it was her last day working there. She’s moving up the coast for semi-retirement, and working reduced hours at the local supermarket branch up there. I don’t think I ever knew her name, but I wish her well.

After my ethics classes, it was gaming night. I took Scully with me to a friend’s place – my wife had a dinner out with her friends. We played a couple of games of 7 Wonders with the Cities expansion – the first time I’ve ever played the game with any expansion set. It was pretty fun, and I managed to win the first game, though did poorly in the second one. Then we played Azul: Queen’s Garden. I’d brought this game from home, but hadn’t played it in a while and had to refresh myself on the rules. Unfortunately I botched one rule and didn’t discover it until the second round, but from then on we played correctly. I ended up coming a poor third of four players.

This morning I went for a 5k run for the first time since leaving for Japan. I didn’t push too hard, but was pleased that my time wasn’t unusually bad.

After lunch my wife and I walked down to a lighting showroom that is not too far away. I’d been thinking about replacing our old boring light fittings with something a little more stylish, and possibly getting one with an extra bulb for increased brightness in the living room area. Since we moved from incandescents to smart LED bulbs, they’re not quite as bright and I miss the brightness when doing things that require concentration, such as playing games (board or D&D) on the dining table.

Anyway, we looked at hundreds of light fittings that were in display and tried to find the intersection of our preferences. There were some styles that I liked that she didn’t like, and vice versa, but we eventually narrowed things down to some that we were both happy with. The lights need to come from their warehouses, and the guy said that one major warehouse was in Brisbane, which is being affected by Tropical Cyclone Alfred, so it might be some time until we get all the lights. But we’re not in a rush, and they should be available in a couple of weeks or so.

That’s the other big news here in Australia. Cyclone Alfred hit Brisbane overnight and fortinately it lost strength just before making landfall, so wasn’t as intense as initially expected. But it’s moving very slowly and will dump a lot of rain on the area over the next two days. There’s a lot of flooding and fallen trees and power lines, which will take weeks to repair. One man is missing, suspected dead, after being washed away by floodwater.

The tail end of the cyclone will hit Sydney over the next couple of days too, as the tropical low moves south. We’re expected to get heavy rain, mostly on Monday and Tuesday, but no damaging winds thankfully.